Uniswitch, a Twenty Third Century Systems Group (TTCS) subsidiary, is working on a VAS platform to be launched in the coming months. According to Uniswitch Managing Director, Reginald Gumbo, this is part of Uniswitch’s long terms strategic direction of developing mobile commerce solutions for the market.
Uniswitch currently operates a Point Of Sale acquiring and transaction switching business. Like the Econet owned Transaction Processing Systems (TPS), Uniswitch is currently one of the main distributors of bulk airtime in Zimbabwe.
According to Mr. Gumbo, Uniswitch hopes to help content providers monetize their content by providing a means to access the more than 9 million mobile phone subscribers in Zimbabwe. Mr. Gumbo revealed that the company is already in talks with a number of content providers and explained that Uniswitch prefers focusing on building a solid platform and leaving end users content to third party providers.
Uniswitch was founded in the early 90s by serial tech entrepreneur, Alex Marufu, and was sold to TTCS in 2007. It became a TTCS internal division until February this year when it was spun off as a separate subsidiary. Alex Marufu is the current TTCS Chief Operating Officer.
Other TTCS subsidiaries include Triple Play Communications, a communications company specializing in VSAT deployments, and Tescon, an ICT business infrastructure company. TTCS itself is primarily a SAP implementing company and has been responsible for the implementation numerous SAP enterprise solutions in Zimbabwe and the wider Sub-Saharan African region.
6 comments
This is too tech for me. Lol
this story needs to be expanded as I hardly picked anything
You guys are doing a tremendous job, we now get to learn about companies and tech entrepreneurs that we previously had no platform to hear about from. I think this is a concise & straight forward article & i dont see what the fuss is about.
@kurai and ocyber VASs are add-on or extra services to the Core or Standard services offerings by an operator. A good example can be the new eTEXT service by Econet (Their primary product being Voice) or Telecel’s upcoming Blackberry services or Africom’s Voice over Broadband (their main product being broadband). VASs are normally implemented to lure subscribers through an enhanced offering or increase the Average Revenue Per User for current subscribers…
@ kurai & ocyber, in VAS platform- is in other words a Value Added Services platorm